It was never effortless to love Aaron Warner. He was a difficult teenage boy who seemed to forget a lot of the time that that was what he was-a teenage boy. He'd always felt that loving or even caring for him would be impossible for all the world to...
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THE MORNING IS cruel to me.
I'm hungover and I'm thinking there's no way I'm ever getting drunk again because, girl, what the hell? My head throbs and aches and I'm so inhumanely thirsty, it's insane.
I don't remember going to sleep last night, only faint memories of Aaron on the floor beside me. Oh. God.
So I grab the water beside my bed and the pills beside it. Throw them down my throat and make my way into the closet. It's there that I change into the prettiest dress I can find. A pale blue one should do. After that, I braid some strands on either side of my head and stick in a couple of golden earrings and a necklace.
Like this, I feel more like myself. Like the old Mara. It's weird, what time and development can do to you. I mean, sure, I hate having gotten drunk last night because it's tearing my brain apart and giving me aneurysm after aneurysm, but. . .I don't know.
I don't regret yesterday.
It gave me perspective. I've been thinking with each effort I put into my appearance: I've been so low. I reached a low I never knew existed and it was killing me on the inside. Slowly but surely. I've been so distant. So cold and curt. So shallow and selfish.
But right now—staring in the mirror, it's like I finally understand that it's okay for me to feel like that. That it was okay for me to cry and scream and want to throw my life away. It was okay for me to hate everything there for a hot second. I was so quick to decide it was anything but right: that I didn't deserve to go through pain and that it needed to be shoved into a little box in my head to be ignored.
Little did I know that the scars I was given are decorations on my skin now. Reminders that I'm a survivor. I mean, shit, I'm not Jesus and I don't think I'll be getting over what I went through anytime soon, but it helps to know that I can grow. That I won't stay like this forever.
Having been gifted a new identity—whatever the hell it may be—it offers me freedom I've only ever dreamed of. Like, . . .I'm myself but I'm someone completely new. Someone I've yet to explore and get to know. She might end up liking blueberries, you never know. Actually, never mind, I would never like blueberries. In any universe.
But I would always love Aaron.
Aaron. I don't know what it is about this revelation that makes me love him even more. Don't get me wrong, I hate that this was kept a secret from me and that someone like Castle knew before I did but. . .I mean, if this is all true, I've not only gained a sister but a new chance. A fresh start. And I can't forget that I'm not the only victim—Aaron's memories were wiped too. He never knew it was my sister he was torturing.
It fucking sucks that he tortured someone in the first place, regardless of whether or not it was someone I knew, but he wanted his mother. He wanted to take care of the one person who loved him at the time. It just kills me to know that those weeks. . .those days I waited around for him sometimes? Those times where he claimed he needed to leave early only to return at five a.m. the next day. . .he was killing someone else and himself.
